Nick Bolock's Blog: Nick's Insight to Madness, page 3

Dragonsbane: Out, about, and learning.

Dragonsbane, the ebook at least, is up for purchase.
The print version... Not so much. I'm waiting for my cover to come back from editing by my sister-in-law so I can upload it for the thirtieth time. No really. I've uploaded it a lot.
The reason? Because every time I do a print cover with a template like is provided to me, I mess up. A lot. I finally just got a thrice-fixed cover passed the auto-setting for Amazon.
It should be hopefully up before end of week. I hope.

Otherwise I'm doing research on the new novel specifically around the time of the Meiji Era or Japan. So look forward to that!

Bye!

New Direction, Switch Tracks!

Here I am again.
A new direction, a different path. A change, a new outlook.
And a surprise.
After my very, very, very (I cannot stress that enough) limited and nonexistent success attracting an agent for Dragonsbane, I've made the decision to self-publish it. It'll be out this week for sure, probably Thursday, ready for purchase, etc.
And after that?
Here's where I confidently say that I'm working on Storyteller Part 3 and it'll be great… but I'd be lying like a carny (no idea how much carnies actually lie). After reviewing and reviewing my notes and idea for Part 3, I've decided to scrap it and start over again. Instead of writing that, I'll be working on two different ideas.
First off is I'll be bringing The Glass, the Thread, and the Fabric to the forefront. The idea behind it is a character-driven fantasy look at post-Meiji Restoration Japan and the influence of the west on the country.
Second, I'll be redoing my plans with Story of Zero. I'll be eventually going ahead and writing it as a serial series and releasing it arc by arc for a low price. Eventually the various arcs will be collected into a volume and etc.
Now that my first playthrough of Persona 5 is winding down, and school is winding me up, I feel more confident.
There's another reason as well.
The fact that I've had two great author meetups lately. Once was with Cathy, my author amigo that confides in me and asks writing questions and stuff like that. Over on her blog she made me the eternal optimist to her pessimist. Which isn't entirely true, don't let her fool you. Either way, go give her books a read. It's a nice break to read Catholic Fiction with well-written characters and believable, human stories.
Second was with Samantha Warren, speculative fiction extraordinaire and de facto leader of the Writer's Coffee House of our area. Meeting with her gave me a push out of the slump I was starting to get into.


Anyway. Dragonsbane. Look for it.
Don't fail me.
Or I'll find you. (Not really.)

Running Wild

Here we are again, another magical, smiling blog post about more and more PANCAKES, robot dinosaur archery, cannons, too many novels, and a card game.

I have a completed set of notes for Dragonsbane Part 2: Reckoning, and still no publisher/agent for Pt 1.Where are they? Heck if I know. More on that in a minute.
The notes for Dpt2 rounded out at sixty some chapters, almost double the length of part one and with more content. I like how it turned out and have most if not all the of the kinks worked out with the story.

As for a publisher... Well, this is the first time since I reached out to two agents that I've actually sat at my computer to write or do anything that isn't school work or using my laptop to play my Switch. The idea of self-publishing Dragonsbane has been tossed around and I did ask the cover artist from Regolith to do me something up as a hypothetical. Right now, I'm in a lurch, but I have a plan. I found a list of 107 of the 'best' fantasy publishers and plan to submit to at least 105 of those. Why 105? Well one I already submitted to and one doesn't take novel submissions anymore. Go figure.
So after all 105 are exhausted then... Well... I'll think on it, but I think you already know I would take the other route then.

Next, I have most of a set of notes for (no longer WORKING TITLE) In Mourning Before the Battle: The Storyteller War Pt3. This entry will conclude the first arc of the series before the middle entry, then off to another land! Sort of.

After that... Where do I start? I've been working on a card game idea that I want to make into a mobile game. Pretty simplistic idea, but I'm waiting on a set of blank cards to make a physical set to understand the balancing better.

I have... Roughly four novels working after that. Two suspense, one fantasy, one sci-fi. How far will they go? No idea. One of the suspense novels is a fleshed out version of the short story I wrote for the NYC competition. I'm doing it at the request of my fiance. She really liked the story. The fantasy novel is a Japanese-inspired tale, and the sci-fi novel is about Kaiju. You know, giant monsters. All of those will be shipped to DAW so I have more wall paper for my Shock and DAW room later in life.

No, really. I plan to save of the rejection letters I get from DAW and pad the walls of my office with them in the future. I really do plan on calling it the Shock and DAW room.

After that... Jeez...
I wrote some material for an RPG a friend of my is trying out. I plan to help more somehow.
And... At some point I plan on rereading Rising Seas and trying to make that into its own little RPG for PC.

*Wow that was a lot*

B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-blocked! A Blogpost of Rejection!

One week and one day ago I received a mysterious letter on my place mat at the kitchen table. It was addressed to me, written in an unfamiliar (stupid me) handwriting, and not marked with a return stamp.

Who could it be?

None other than DAW replying to my manuscript submission and, in case you missed the title of the blog, they aren't interested.
(For anyone who is wondering WHAT the letter says exactly. It just remarks that they don't feel that the submission would be commercially successful at the current time.)
Am I hurt?
No.
Did I weep and rend my garments?
Nope.
Did I try to demolish Tokyo?
Hardly, I'm way too short for that.

What I did do was have the letter laminated so that I can keep it on the wall near my laptop and gaze upon it with... Shock and DAW. (I went there.)
Some of my close friends and family can't fathom why this has got me down, and I simply explain:
A: I already knew I would get bounced. B: I often need something to knock me downs so I can get back up again. C: A few of DAW's more successful people were rejected first.
So I'm really not worried about it. I still have to correct PANCAKES in Dragonsbane, but then I'll pester more people.

To that end, the scripting notes for Dragonsbane Pt2 are... half completed? I hesitate to give any definite estimation on progress. My only hard fact is I have 31 chapters noted down and several more events to work through. I might work out the notes on that, then leave it until I get a certain future of Dragonsbane Pt1.
I've begun notes for WORKING TITLE: Twilight, in Mourning, Storyteller War Pt3. I have a great many ideas for this to used from the scrapped ADAM and some original stuff. That isn't going nearly as smoothly as hoped, but its getting there.
On another note, I did have a new idea for a thriller/suspense/whatever novel. I won't give much in the way of details just yet, but it did get a green light from my harshest critic!

My LOUDEST BLOG EVER

Why do I say this is my loudest blog yet? Because I have so much to cover that I might scream. Really.

FROM THE TOP:
I finished the revisions on Dragonsbane. There were some mistakes that I missed, names and such, but those can be fixed in a few hours of work. The two biggest errors came from using placeholders for different things and not notating them properly. As such there were still instances of 'Wolf' where it should be 'Iris' and 'Orpheus, Titania' where it should be 'Stone Cliff, Centralis'. The other issue was when my placeholders for the city and country got swapped. My solution? Use Word's find and replace to change all instances of Orpheus, Titania, Stone Cliff, and Centralis to PANCAKES. You heard me, hot and steamy PANCAKES. I figure I'll just use the find tool again to just sift through and fix them to the proper context. Done and done.

And then I did something reckless, downright irresponsible.

I sent the whole thing to a publisher, uncorrected. Following my savage instincts, I printed all three hundred... Correction, SIX HUNDRED DOUBLE SPACED PAGES, to DAW in hopes that they'll like me enough to not laugh at me.
(If you are wondering about the 300 then 600 pages... Well, I missed in their directions where they said double space the silly thing.)
So I sent that out and wait. Why wait? Well they have rules and rules are meant to be followed. Rule is that you can send them an unsolicited manuscript, meaning that you don't have to send a letter asking IF they want it first, but there's a catch. That catch is that if you send it to them, you can't submit it anywhere else for three months OR until you get a letter from them saying "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN THE BATHROOM DAY AND NIGHT? WHY DON'T YOU GET OUT OF THERE AND GIVE SOMEONE ELSE A CHANCE?"
I doubt that's what the letter will say, but I'd appreciate rejected in the form of Mel Brooks references. A boy can dream.
So now I wait. I figure I'll either get a letter or I figured out that I can start pestering new people within a week after Persona 5 releases.

On other fronts, I finally found another game that emotionally drained me. Final Fantasy XV. Played it, finished it, loved it. I saw a twist or two coming, but they still beat tears out of me. Even the ending. Man, ouch. Jeez.
I'm working more and more on Dragonsbane Pt 2. I was struggling a few months ago with the titles of each novel. I tried writing down a TON of different names and styles and ideas and etc. But nothing stuck. Finally, I took note of how Sonata Arctica, my favorite band, has been doing follow-ups to old songs and adding 'Pt 2: subtitle'. Like 'White Pearl, Black Oceans Pt2: By the Grace of the Sea'. So in homage, I hope to be able to do Dragonsbane Pt2 and Pt3, but I won't reveal the subtitles yet.
I have a lot of the groundwork covered and some of the construction themes for one of the main settings this time. I had to do more research, but I like this setting more and more as I go on. It might seem cliched, but aw well. People will get over it some how.

What else can I ramble on?

Ah yeah.

So I entered a short story contest that proves ready to kick my teeth in. Not really, but I'm a hair out of my league. How so? Well, I have to write within word limits and with three focuses. Genre, idea, character. easy peesy, write? (Get it?) WRONG. I got an unfamiliar genre right off the bat and had to read some articles. I was fairly certain I've never read anything in this category, but after review, I have. A LOT. I hope to win this round and move on to win the contest. It takes a few months, so... WiSh Me LuCk.

I'm trying to keep up this once a month bit, and I think it's going well. I mean, I don't have much to say at any given moment, so... Yeah.

Anyway, toodles. Come back next month or whenever for more of me!

Into Thin Air

Once a month really isn't working, is it?
I went the whole month of November without doing the tiniest of blogging. Not that anyone will hold it against me. I mean, I AM behind on a lot of stuff at this point. There's a letter to my uncle on my desktop that's over due by almost two months... SO yeah.

If any indication was needed, I didn't do NaNoWriMo this year. The time really got away from me. Seeing as I'd have only three nights to actually write, I'd be ramming and cramming a lot of words into those short times. And Dragonsbane was so very close to being done that I couldn't help myself.

Dragonsbane. is. DONE. The initial draft is finished, and I plan to revise the week following Christmas when I have too much time and nothing else to do. It would be lovely if my future sister in law would read the portions I sent her, but... Yeah.

That's the shortest update I can provide right now. I mean, I really don't have much to say. I am sitting on another more meaningful post, but that I want to do when the time is right.

To NaNo, or not to NaNo; Dragonsbane: If...

Sorry about not doing the once-a-month post, but I fell off a little bit.

Now into the meat of this post.

October is almost over. Halloween draws near, my costume is on its way, Christmas displays are cropping up like flesh-hungry reminders of that time of year.

YIKES.

That also means that it is time once again for NaNoWriMo. The yearly event in November (National Novel Writing Month) where writers of all calibers dedicate themselves to writing 50,000 words for their own benefit (or torture).
Last year I wrote ADAM for the event and succeeded, much to my delight and the approval of others.
This year, I have no idea if I'm going to do it.

Long story short, I HAVE an idea that I've played with many a time before and it fits the theme of this year: Sci-Fi. Whether or not I can or will actually participate is totally up in the air with a week to go.
Why? Simple. I have a lot of stuff going on, most importantly (after wedding planning of course) is Dragonsbane. I'm so very close to finishing the primary writing of the novel. Like three chapters close. Between that, classes, working, and etc, I don't know that I will have time to participate fully.

My NaNo idea was a sci-fi story based in the Cold War era, late Cold War I figure. Lonely sociopath gets chosen by a lottery to be shipped off into the cold wilderness in a bunker of mysterious origin. He's allowed to live there, free of charge, as long as he keeps a journal (the basis of the story), and follows the orders of a scientist.

I like it, but I don't know how much of it I can actually function with. You know?

Next thing of note: I had a cool idea. I really cool idea in my idea. Last week my fiance and I went to see Storks, a movie. When we were leaving, I had an epiphany about Dragonsbane. I want to possibly write on an experimental time line screw-around called Dragonsbane: If...
One of the important characters from the second book would get scorned by Thomas in some way and goes back in time to get even.
Time line fun for the whole family.

Anyway, I'll try to post next week about my WriMo suffering, if it exists, but I don't know yet.

Catch you around.

I'm still alive, promise.

Yes, yes. I'm still here. I know everyone has been dying for a new blog post from me in such a long time.

My last post was over a month ago, and it was a very short post. There wasn't much for me to reflect on RIGHT now about passing the hardest part of Dragonsbane. Really, I've written my favorite part, my least favorite part, the hardest part, and the easiest. I have just a few chapters to finish writing before I more on to my last few fixes. After that, I bang on the door of every agent and publisher with an open query to make them love me like Vader just wanted Palpatine to love him.

All in all, Dragonsbane has become more and more fun now that I have an endgame and a clearer picture. The praises I got from a few peers helped a lot too. I still have no idea if this book is marketable or not. If it come down to it and I have no success, I'll just publish it myself like I did with Rising Seas and Regolith.

On that note, let's transition over to whatever else I've been working on. I reread ADAM and the results are grim. It's not good, and I don't like the way it clashes with the rest of the story line of STW. It doesn't pave the way for advancement like I wanted to do, and it feels more phoned in as opposed to actually fitting in. The drastic shift from fantasy to more sci-fi didn't help much and it left gaping holes that I didn't know what to do with.

I was left wandering where I could patch up the story and bring everyone forward for what I had intended as a fourth entry. That was when inspiration struck handily. At this very moment I am working on a different third entry! And plan to write that during the NaNoWriMo this year. Hopefully.

Maybe.

Anyway, I hope that this little shift also allows me to expand the characters like I wanted better and more fully. Additionally, I would love to continue with some of the same characters well past the fourth entry and give them more to do. We shall see.

In my personal time I'm still working on school. Every day gets me a little closer to that sexy, sexy master's degree and a teaching position. I'm dying waiting for a game to come out. No, really, it might kill me.

Within the confines of this blog, I don't think I've ever mentioned this game or the context of it. So, ok, Square Enix has this series called Dragon Quest. It's one of Japan's 'big three' RPG games alongside the well-known Final Fantasy and lesser-known Shin Megami Tensei. Now, when I was a kid, we had a Hollywood Video store. HV was a rental store like Blockbuster and while they carried a lot of the same products, HV carried more niche games like Dragon Quest, SMT, etc in their rental library. Of course, the reason I bring this up is because I had the privileged of renting Dragon Quest 7 for the Playstation.

The game was a titanic wonder to me as a little kid. It was a TWO DISK GAME. At the time, I never knew such a thing was possible. And yes, I was one of those kids who assumed he could skip part of the game by inserting the second disk.

Starting the game, I had absolutely no clue what to do. It was all new to me, the nubile gamer, at the time. I never got far, and I never saw much beyond the first twenty minutes of the game. Those two facts have spurred me for a long time now trying to find an affordable PS1 copy to play...

That was until the announced the game was being remade for the 3DS. There are three weeks to go for that, and I'll stop yammering on about that now. But yeah, might kill me.

Anyway, I'm digging this once a month schedule for the blog (before some authors insist it takes away from the writing process). See you next month and stay tuned!

Hot Summer Night: The Hardest Part

Last time in a blog, I mentioned that I got to write one of the scenes I'd been sitting on for a long time. The long-awaited scene where Thomas and William get to smacking each other around and such. That was fun, that was neat, and it was the scene I have always wanted.

Today, however, I got to a scene that I never wanted to write. It was a hard scene to write, the part where the fate of Thomas's father is revealed. I had to do a lot of research, and understanding, and etc to really nail how I wanted this part to feel. I can't disclose much of it now, because I don't want to ruin the impact of it later on, but it was a long, hard haul from start to finish. The rest of Dragonsbane is easier and more tame compared to this instance.

Long Time Out

I'm still here, promise.
I took some time off since the last post to think and plan Dragonsbane more. It's amusing how it is shaping up much more differently than I originally imagined.
One that note, I did get to write my long awaited dream scene in the book. It is the one thing that had remained (mostly) constant throughout the process. Albiet, when I let my fingers do the tying, the scene came out much shorter than before. I do plan to go back and reread it when my life schedule smooths out a bit more. Right now, I just want to keep plugging along and working out the entirety of the novel first, then go back and nitpick.

All in all, things are good. Atlus gave us a release date for Persona 5. Yeah, that has nothing to do with the blog, but I still like mentioning it. The Persona series, as well as its parent series Shin Megami Tensei, have shaped my story style greatly since I first picked up SMT Strange Journey way back in my high school days.

I do have an author meeting with Catherine DePasquale soon. Little bit of lunch, some chatter here and there. I do enjoy our meetings, despite their infrequency, but all the same. I do have to wonder what I will learn this time in our discussions.